Benjamin Lau: It's a bind on black. White plays c4 for one reason or another, and this inhibits black's main freeing moves- b5 and d5. It used to be considered a very bad idea to allow a Maroczy bind (it usually is avoided by playing ...Nf6 to lead to an early Nc3 locking the white c pawn in. In modern times though, while allowing the Maroczy Bind is still somewhat dubious, it's not considered an outright mistake anymore, if you handle the following positions correctly. Kasparov confidently allowed a Maroczy bind in one of his games with Junior, and Tal himself lets the bind come down all the time in the Sicilian Kan or Taimanov I think. Watson, the author of Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, contends that the Maroczy bind isn't as potent as some make it out to be due to issues of dynamism. He says about a diagram with a typical Maroczy bind position: "White has succeeded in suppressing both of the breaks ...b5 and ...d5, but it doesn't seem to be doing him much good. Suba talks about this as the problem of a 'good postion which can't be improved' versus 'a bad position that can be substantially improved.' White's pieces are in a sense ideally placed, preventing Black's counterplay... ...but almost any committal move that white plays thematic moves like b4, Nc2, Nb3) allows black to free his game."

Shadout Mapes: If I remember correctly, on the Sicilian Kan page, it was noted that the Maroczy Bind setup didn't have quite as much effect as with other formations. I'm not sure why, in any case, it brings about a different setup. In the Accelerated Dragon/Fianchetto, black basically offers white if he wants to play it.

Benjamin Lau: Your welcome. To elaborate, one reason why hedgehogs and other positions with binds don't disgust modern players as much is because they have found that the bind can prove as harmful to white as it is to black. Black's main freeing moves are prohibited, but because he threatens to "break out" of his prison constantly, white himself is often forced into passivity, forced to react to black's aggressive intentions before pursuing his own ambitions. If white does not actively keep on the suppression, black breaks free and has at least equality. Of course, it's a double edged strategy still to let the bind come down and mostly only the good players play the resulting positions well. A common theme in Maroczy binds is to sacrifice your b pawn (to remove white's c pawn) in order to play d5! to activate your pieces. See Huebner vs Kasparov, 1981 for instance.

Pawsome: Regarding the discussion of the bind: true, it's not as binding as it used to be, yet white still wins a large share of the games where he is the binder and black is the one being bound. According to Andrew Soltis, who devotes a shole chapter to it in his "Pawn Structure Chess," Maroczy had the bind applied to him early in his career. After this loss he became its staunchest advocate. Untlimately other players associated it with him and named it for him. Note that the bind is also played by black in various lines of the English. Some illustrative games from Soltis' informative book can be accessed via my game collection "Maroczy Unbound," the title Soltis uses in his book.

7Heaven: The irony is that Maroczy never played it as White-at least there are not recorded games of that.

You make a terrible mistake if you underestimate the Maroczy Bind.White can't play passively here,Black has.White must simply exploit the position,the Bind already shuts down a major part of Black's counterplay.Of course,White can make a mistake and lose,it's not a forced win.But if White plays good,Black won't have space to move and when you don't have space..

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